Hickman Saves the Hobby

 Tracy Hickman.  Tracy bleedin' Hickman.  In the mid 1980s his name was everywhere in D&D.  For those who aren't familiar, he was the co-author of the Dragonlance series, as well as the writer of the original Ravenloft module, most of the Desert of Desolation series, and Rahasia, along with supplements for other games.  It was his work that spawned the Dragonlance and Ravenloft settings, which were heavily supported throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Tracy Hickman wrote some classic stuff, that's undeniable.  The original Ravenloft is a masterpiece, a ground breaking module which brought home the concept of an intelligent villain who toys with the party and hunts them down, unlike so many other modules in which the bad guys so often sat waiting in their lair. The opening module of the Desert of Desolation series, Pharaoh, is a highly imaginative romp through an Egyptian inspired pyramid.  Great stuff.

BUT. His writing style was heavy handed.  All too often he started an adventure in an overly forceful manner, even in the 2 adventures above - Ravenloft trapped the party in Barovia, Pharoah had the party convicted of some random crime. Worse though, he was the master of the railroad, adventures which moved the party from one planned location or situation to the next, step by step, no matter what they did or how they resolved the issue.  Ravenloft was free of this, but the Desert of Desolation series, for all its merits, was linear.  The main culprit however, was Dragonlance.

 

The opening to Pharaoh, you have been charged blah blah blah, found guilty blah blah blah, of something you can do nothing about.....

 The Dragonlance modules tied in with a series of novels. The initial few modules were written 1st, then the 1st novel, then the procedure was reversed with the later novels being written before the D&D adventures.  This meant the modules, 16 of them in total including campaign add-ons, told a preset story. A very very long one.  They were designed to be used with the characters provided - those from the novels.  Of course, with such a lengthy story, using pre-set characters, the adventures were on rails. They had great artwork, many of the maps are among the best ever seen in TSR products, and contained some memorable encounters, but the feel throughout was that you were playing somebody else's story.  From the very 1st encounter in the very 1st module when Fewmaster Toede gives his spiel and gallops away, though to the 1st Dragon encounter when Khisanth has specific moves it will do before returning to its lair, there is an overall feeling of 'what the party attempts does not really matter'.  What if they want to fire arrows at Toede, what if they block off the Dragon's retreat, or manage to somehow take it down quickly? 

 

Uh oh, big nasty dragon.  Don't worry, just hide from its breath for a few rounds and it'll fly away.  Because Tracy says so.

 This heavy handed style of adventure writing went on to become commonplace.  As the 80s progressed, and as we moved in to the 90s and later, thus more adventure writers employed this style.  Classic open, location-based town, wilderness and dungeon crawls such as Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Village of Hommlet, and the Giants series, were increasingly replaced by event based 'story' adventures.

So why has Hickman saved our hobby?  Covid 19 has forced many games to move online, and online games require much more work for the Dungeon Master - preparing digital versions of the maps, with tokens.  This is not a problem for groups who run entirely Theatre of the Mind, but with a slower pace of game, it can be quite hard to maintain that level of focus, thus online games tend to be more centred on visual representations. A traditional open game, often very sandboxy, is very very difficult and time consuming to prepare - thus online gaming lends itself to story based play.  Linear.  Event-based.  Railroady.  The Tracy Hickman style.

 

Of Drow, Orcs, Sewers, and Slanging matches...

Any gamer would have to have their head firmly in the sand to have failed to notice the changes being wrought on D&D in recent years, and not just D&D, other games have shifted too - all as part of making the hobby inclusive.  We're now in a position in 2020 where publishers are editing past products, adding disclaimers, and working towards standardising, or even removing, the concept of race from the games.  This follows on from the push in recent years to ensure more diversity of gender and sexuality within gaming products.

I have a problem with it all.  And judging by comments made by a lot of the old-school gamers, I'm not the only one.

Firstly let me take you back to my gaming roots.  I began playing in the early 80s.  I attended an all-male school for intellectually high-achievers, which is where I first experienced Dungeons and Dragons.  Given the environment, D&D was almost certainly more acceptable there than in many other schools, but I still got flak for my hobby from time to time.  Thus my little gaming clique was fairly tight-knit - geeks within a geeky environment, but still somewhat on the fringes.  And in my group, all male of course, there were no girls at the school, we had the gobby short kid with ADHD (me), a Polish immigrant, a ginger kid with glasses, and an outrageously camp lad.  Other gamers we also hung around with included a lad who parents were from India and the tallest guy in the school year (who also had an acne problem).  All we cared about was playing games.  Yeah there was plenty of banter between us, some which might be considered very offensive nowadays, but it was between friends, and it didn't prevent us from being such.

Roll forward several decades, and my gaming experiences are still with fairly diverse groups, and have featured people of all manner of races, genders and sexualities - and it doesn't matter.  Again, all that matters is the game. We all have fun!  Nobody is excluded from any game based on who they are.

So why do I take issue with the recent and current shift in the gaming world?  I'm going to focus on D&D to explain this.  As a child I loved history - give me a book on castles and medieval knights and I'd be gone for hours, then before I was 10 I read The Hobbit. Though I started with Basic D&D when I was 11, I quickly moved over to AD&D. These were my gaming influences.  It's obvious from merely a glance that AD&D has an expected period of history which it is based - albeit rather loosely in places. The weaponry, armour and general technology is late medieval.  Yes there are exceptions - some of the items are mistakes - Studded Leather armour for example - but that's easily fixed by crossing it out and writing Lamellar in its place. It's clear from the rules that gunpowder based weapons are in their infancy.  There are a few items that are a little out of sync, but by and large, it's all stuff that would have been seen on the battlefield of Europe and the Near East between roughly the 11th and 16th centuries AD.  There are other nods towards historical influences - lists of noble titles, the chapter on castle building, and what became the default game world - Greyhawk - with all its wonderful heraldry in the setting booklets.

But the biggest giveaway in the language that Gary Gygax uses.  He either had a vocabulary of Shakespearean proportions, or he wrote with a Thesaurus of Middle English terms by his side. This article discussed it in more depth.. http://phrontistery.info/disq6.html. Gygax's writing served to enhance the flavour. Much of it went over my 12/13 year old head at times, but that didn't matter - I loved it, and was so happy when I finally found out what each of the polearms looked like (1985 - Unearthed Arcana)!!

When online arguments kick off, which they invariably do when the topic of D&D vs history is brought up, there are always those who claim that D&D has never been historical.  This may be true, but early D&D certainly drew much of its inspiration from history, and any who deny this are simply wrong. Even in the 1990s, when the gaming was shifting somewhat, TSR published a number of Historical supplements based on the Celts, Romans, Vikings and others.



Late in the 1980s, the Forgotten Realms was released as a campaign setting. I was a dyed in the wool Greyhawk fan and ignored it. Over time though, the Realms supplanted Greyhawk as the main game setting, and now 35 years later, D&D and Forgotten Realms are synonymous.  The current iteration of the Realms is a highly magical and fantastical place, much moreso than was Greyhawk.  Whereas Greyhawk (and AD&D in general) drew largely from the Tolkien trope of a humanocentric world, with traditionally aloof/arrogant Elves bickering with more practical, dour Dwarfs, the Forgotten Realms is presented a melting pot of racial harmony, expressing many modern day ideals. For me, the Realms feels awkward.  There are airships (1st flight of a hot air balloon carrying living creatures was in the 1780s), and cities have extensive sewers you can get lost in (a Victorian-era invention - previous sewer systems were much narrower pipes). Other material brings in handguns, and players seem happy recreating the Wild West...... All this with a basic background of castles, swords, and mail armour.  It feels like a mess.  Then on top of all of this, Wizards of the Coast have layered a number of aspects of modern society, with a focus on the visibility of gay characters, same sex marriage, specified gender pronouns, and are now discussing tweaking/removing 'race' from the game mechanics to some degree.



I'll openly admit I find it all very awkward.

Now of course, most gamers coming to the hobby now do not have the original gaming inspirations and interests that I or my peers had - more commonly they are inspired by comics, video games, Manga, and superhero films - so maybe the Forgotten Realms does not feel awkward to them.  And maybe this is always why the responses to any suggestion of D&D being based on history get such angry responses?

No I'm not a racist for keeping Drow evil, and Orcs savage.  No I'm not a homophobe for not having gay marriage in my D&D settings. No, I'm not a killjoy for running a D&D game without gunslingers.  I'm just an old gamer whose roots lie with AD&D, and Gygax, and Tolkien.  And I'm proud it.  And by the way, anyone is welcome at my gaming tables.

Making 5E work for me…

I came back to gaming in 2012, having last played in 1992, and thus seen the early days of 2E AD&D and previously played a lot of B/X and 1E – along with a number of older systems such as MERP and Paranoia, and they all had something in common.  They were lethal. Yes Paranoia was comically so, and a parody, but that’s by the by.  Older systems had a strong emphasis on quality of play by the players themselves – you were expected to be cautious, inventive, and most importantly – well prepared.

A couple of years after I got back into gaming, 5E was released – it was declared to be a throwback to the old days, simple, fast and fluid, with more power given back to the DM. This was supposed to be somewhat of a reaction to 3E/3.5E/4E, systems that had shifted the balance of power to the rules and away from the DM. In terms of adjudication at the table, early systems left the bulk of that up to the DM, but as time progressed, the rules became more and more encompassing – a ‘rule for everything’ approach.  Then there’s the blandness of the character classes in 4E, a system where balance was all-encompassing to the point where classes ended up feeling the same.  Everyone seems to have x powers that do x amount of damage – it was criticised as being like an MMORPG at the table, and that criticism is fair.

I thoroughly enjoyed my initial forays into 5E, both as DM and player – of course this was low level stuff as that’s where you begin and yes, the rules appeared on the surface to be simple. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic the game uses in fast and intuitive. The system’s bounded accuracy meant the powergaming style of play which dominated the 3E era was largely shunted out, and the clunky, burdensome combat of both 3E and 4E was largely eliminated.  The character Backgrounds is also an excellent feature, giving PCs personality and purpose.

All good?  Well no, not really….

I often look at my big, beautiful shelf of books, and on there are 6 of the 5E hardbacks.  I now rarely open them, as I’ve not run a 5E campaign in a while.  I do occasionally play games of 5E, and yes they are fun in short doses, but do I have the urge to play in a lengthy campaign up to high levels?  Nope.

At low levels of play, 5E DOES have an old school feel – characters are fragile, the player must exercise caution, and inventiveness and teamwork are often necessary for success.  But the time at these levels is short, and once the party reaches roughly 5^th level, the power curve ramps upwards steeply.

As characters progress thus they gain more abilities, often based around a long rest/short rest structure, and this makes it feel more and more like 4E as the game goes on – the video game element still lingers.

All hitpoints are healed on a long rest, if a PC gets reduced to 0hp then receives healing then usually they are good to go on their next turn in combat, saves are often repeated every round to resist effects, the ‘action economy’ is critical, and the obsession with balance still pervades. Yet more nods at the video game style of play.  Keep everyone involved at all times or else!

There’s also a lack of ‘character’ in the game, and this I feel stems from the game being pitched at a player base who get their fantasy inspiration from more modern sources than older versions of the game.  No longer have most players cut their teeth on Tolkien, Greek legends, the stories of King Arthur and Conan, or novels from the Swords and Sorcery genre – nowadays it’s video games, superhero films, and anime.  Thus the tropes of the innocent, naïve Halfling with a pudgy belly and hairy feet, or the coarse beer-swilling Dwarf obsessed with gold, or the aloof and inherently magical Elf – they have all been shunted into the background.  There’s an ‘anything goes’ approach, but the net effect is one of blandness – when there is total freedom in terms of character creation, nothing really feels special, or different. Intolerance, mistrust, and prejudice between races is no longer the default – probably due to societal awareness.  But the game is not set in a modern society!

So how would I fix 5E to make me want to play it?  To give me the enthusiasm required to run a campaign again, and not lose interest quickly…..

COMBAT

- 0hp is unconscious, if a PC is reduced to 0hp and subsequently healed then they can still fight, but all actions by them are made at disadvantage until the end of that combat.
- 0hp causes exhaustion, 1 level of exhaustion added EACH time the PC reaches 0hp
- the ‘save every round’ rule is removed for effects such as Poison and Petrification, I might keep it for mind related spells, I’d have to see how that worked.
- the Healing Word spell is removed, as that is the biggest culprit for the ‘up-down- up again’ nature of combat

- save or die situations will exist

CHARACTERS

- the intention to multiclass must be declared at 1^st level, and classes can never be more than 1 level apart
- race and alignment restrictions on classes to be restored similar to 1e/2e – though not quite identically, as some races DO fit classes that were not allowed in older systems – for example Halflings cannot use arcane spells, Barbarians must be tribal Humans or Half Orcs, Dwarfs are creatures of rock and stone and thus cannot be Druids, and so on…

- Racism exists.  If you want to play a Drow on the surface you’ll probably be burnt alive by the people of the 1^st village you enter. No, your Half Orc is not pretty, you’re the ugly, unwanted offspring of a violent sexual encounter and society will treat you accordingly. Tiefling?  Dragonborn? See Drow.

- experience requirements are tripled

- xp for gp is restored and full xp is always given if the party intelligently avoid a dangerous situation without resorting to combat.
- material components must be used – and bought and kept track of during play – ditto ammunition.

- most magic items will have fixed charges, and not recover any when you rest

- The Identify spell is needed to properly understand magic items (potions can be tasted).

SKILLS

- Passive Perception is only used to determine the success or failure of an enemy’s attempt to be stealthy – not for traps and secret doors, these must be worked out by the players specifically stating their characters are looking, and using the Investigation skill if necessary.  PCs do not have some innate radar going ‘PING’!

- Information related skills are to be rolled by the DM behind the screen and the result narrated to the players

- If a trained and intelligent Wizard cannot fathom out the meaning of some Arcane writing, those with lesser skill cannot even try… this would be applied to other skills, with 1 roll allowed for the WHOLE party.  Help may be given to give advantage to the roll, but only by a PC who would realistically be able to.

- 20 is not an automatic success (yeah I know by RAW it isn’t, but a lot of people seem to assume that it is), and occasionally, if the player is attempting something really stupid, it would be preferable to fail dismally!  Yeah you can roll, but if you want to flirt outrageously with the fair princess, if you roll a 20 and get her attention then her father will probably have you executed at dawn.

ADVENTURES

- CR and relevant encounter balancing will be largely ignored, the players must not have the expectation that the world will revolve around the level of their PCs.  It’s up to them to decide what is too much for them and what is realistically possible.

-  The PCs are NOT superheroes, caution will almost always be the best option.

- The gritty slow healing rules in the DMG will be used.

Thankfully, 5E is actually pretty well designed at its core, and none of the above changes will break it.  Certainly they would all change its feel greatly, but in my opinion, that is for the better – because I’m an old git who prefers the old ways….